Jim Kukral – Small Business Consultant

Jim,

As I posted before on your blog, I appreciate and welcome all constructive criticism, good or bad. But I gotta say... you're being a bit of a HYPOCRITE here. For someone that seems so against this BlogRush service, why on earth would you then SUPPORT IT by being an active user hosting the widget??? Are you just hedging your bets?

And I have to laugh a little about your "earth shattering predictions" about my company eventually selling products to this group of people. Is that supposed to be A SINISTER DEEP-DARK SECRET? Is it an EVIL SCHEME to actually create services that people will want to use and then sell products to those customers?

Hello, this is called BUSINESS. And it shouldn't be a surprise to ANYONE. You act like we're doing something "sneaky" by trying to build up a popular service and then monetize it by selling products and services to some of the users that will WANT them. You make it sound like we're hijacking their blogs and they'll have to pay a fee to get access to it. Seriously, give me a break. Our company is all about delivering VALUE to people. That's why I've been successful online for over 15 YEARS. I treat my customers like GOLD. I believe in delivering tremendous VALUE. I wouldn't have it any other way. Why on earth would I risk my existing multi-million dollar training products business by purposely putting out some service that I thought no one would benefit (or at least only the big bloggers as you say)? I'd have to be an IDIOT to have a strategy like that.

Think of this way for a minute. How much more successful would my company be if we actually provided a service like BlogRush that truly kicked butt and really helped people benefit? We'd make 1,000 TIMES the money we would if the service didn't help people.

There's no "secret" plan in the works with BlogRush. My new company I am building, Income.com (of which BlogRush is a part of) will be launching a community site in the coming months. A site for entrepreneurs, bloggers, and business owners. BlogRush will be one of many outlets for us to introduce people to the Income.com community. But the monetization of BlogRush is already built in -- you obviously missed it. BlogRush takes 10% of the headline spaces (1 of the 5 spots for every 2 widget impressions... of 10 total). We'll be allowing users to buy more credits if they choose to do so.

As far as BlogRush not working for small bloggers, there's no evidence of this yet. We have SOME tiny traffic blogs that have referred people with a lot of traffic that they have been benefiting from. But on average, it's way too early to tell. But rest assured that we will do everything we can to benefit ALL USERS of our network. In fact, right now we are delivering bonus impressions to every user -- in equal amounts, regardless of traffic size.

And, by the way, what's this "Multi-Level Marketing Scheme" talk. It's a freakin' FREE WIDGET that delivers relevant content on your blog and happens to have a traffic generation method built-in. There's no money changing hands. There's no sinister plot in motion.

Plain and simple: it's a free service designed to help people get more targeted traffic to their blogs. It's too early to tell how effective it's going to be. This is only the beginning an we're working very hard to improve things as quickly as possible.

~John

Hey Jim,

Very interesting video and follow up by John Reese. I just added the Blog Rush widget to my blog today, so haven't been able to test it, yet. However, from every indication it does look like an interesting tool, similar to the Sphere widget. If it can bring me extra traffic then I'm all for it.

Matthew Sherborne

Hey John, thanks for the long thought out comment. Just a few points.

1. I'm just testing the widget, as I mentioned in my first entry on this the other day. I didn't even use my referral link in my first post and I noted that.

2. Bottom line. The promise your software makes is disengenious to say the very least. From your video, "it's cheaper, it's faster and you don't have to do any work at all to get more traffic". Essentially, something like that.

That's just wrong advice, it is. You get more traffic by writing high-quality content, plain and simple. Sure, your widget offers some extra exposure, but in all reality, a low traffic blogger won't get much from it at all.

Again, I think it's smart, and you're a smart guy, and I do apologize if you're taking this criticism the wrong way. I've been in the blogging biz since 2001 and I've seen it all and I feel I have a pretty good grasp on this space.

So don't take offense when I see something that I don't think will work for low traffic bloggers. They're tired of promises, and so am I. Maybe it will work and I'll be wrong. Who knows.

It will be interesting to see how people feel about it in 3 months. But by then you'll have announced something else to them I'm sure. Which is fine. This IS business, you're right.

Jim, the widget is as useful as the bumpzee or mybloglog widget's you and so many other bloggers (even big ones) are using. your visitor doesn't really get a log of value by seeing who is visiting your blog and those that show up in those widget's don't get a lot of traffic from them but overall they have some value. It helps create some sense of community.
Blogrush may do the same if they manage to make it word well and show highly targeted posts.

Great post Jim. I was debating the usefulness of the widget for low traffic blogs and finally took it down. Not only was I not going to get any traffic from it, the article titles were way off topic.